Friday, 17 April 2015

This week we would
like to take up an issue which does not only pertain to current events in field
of Classics, but to an ongoing global development: The growing significance of
the English language for international communication.

Even if English has
not reached all areas of the world yet, it surely appears to be on its way of
becoming a full-fledged lingua franca. As such, it enables people from all over
the globe to communicate with each other and thus brings a number of practical
as well as economic advantages. For one, it allows FIEC to write but one blog
entry on this topic to all its readers speaking completely different mother
tongues. Yet, there may be a downside to
this development. We have to ask ourselves whether or not we should allow
English to become the ONLY language of international importance.

An Austrian petition,
which was launched a few days ago, addresses this very problem. More
specifically, it calls into question a decision made by the FWF, Fonds
zur Förderung der wissenschaftlichen Forschung (“Austrian Science Fund”),
which is an essential institution giving financial support to Austrian
scientific research. A couple of years ago, those responsible for the fund
decided that applications to it were to be submitted in English only. They
argued that it would thus be easier to find suitable evaluators for the
individual projects in need of funding.

The supporters of the
petition, on the other hand, consider this restriction a step into the wrong
direction. Particularly in the field of humanities, they argue, a multilingual
approach has to be taken since scholars from all over the world have been
communicating in several languages for a long time and because considerable
parts of the relevant literature is French, Italian, German etc. Therefore, it
can be claimed, that a qualified evaluator definitely has to be acquainted with
a number of languages in order to understand the context of any given
application in the field of, e.g., Philosophy or Classics.

Apart from that, languages
are not mere practical tools, but carry the cultural identity of the peoples by
which they are spoken. To strengthen the use of one universal language might
means to lose a great portion of our cultural diversity, a problem that reaches
far beyond academic discourse.

To read and sign the
petition and help allow German applications to the FWF, please follow this link.

The issue is
certainly worth some discussion. It might as well be of interest what native
speakers of English think about this topic. Does the quality of academic
writing in English, as a whole, worsen because of the high number of non-native
speakers using it for their theses and articles? After all, it is inevitable
that some aspects of any text get lost in translation.

We invite every one
of you to share your thoughts on this issue. Please comment on the entry and
let us know your perspective. We would be pleased to see a lively discussion.